Anyone ever grown potatoes this close?
 

I wasn't sure how many potatoes would come in a 3 pound bag of seed potatoes. I ordered 3 bags (9 pounds total). One bag of Purple Viking and 2 bags of Yukon Gold. I filled the bed up with cow manure compost blend and covered with straw about 4 inches deep. I did this to try to avoid hilling them up again although I have plenty of straw left over should I need to top them off. I ended up with 28 total potatoes which I planted whole...no need chitting them with this many :twisted: The bed is 4' x 8'. The sides are 10" high. Just curious if anyone else ever tried this type of concentration when planting their potatoes?

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The above 3 photos were taken the day I planted them 4-21-18. The one below was taken today 5-21-18.

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First picture had me worried - glad you got them out of the mesh bags!:lol:

You yield may depend on light and water more than anything else. Looking forward to hearing how the experiment goes!

I've got 4-50' rows of potatoes in (mostly fingerlings) I got a 50' row of Rose Finn Apple planted from 3#s of seed potatoes, I only got 25' of Magic Molly for #3's of seed potatoes... 12" spacing on both. Rose Finns are over a foot tall already.

I see a few videos now of others who are planting them closer in raised beds. All the other videos, especially those made by people planting out in fields, had them being planted like 2 feet apart and 3 feet between rows. My plan was to have a full bed of potatoes to harvest without wasting space. It's a brand new bed with all new soil plus some potato feed. The compost manure is especially loved by worms and I grew my best garden ever last year. I still think I may only need 2 bags (3 lbs. each) of potatoes for this space. This season will tell 8-)

Yes PhilaGardener, I wasn't going to plant them still in the mesh bags :lol: Although, I wonder if you could lay a few mesh mags under the potatoes and gather them up to harvest and have them already bagged and ready to store :?!?: It would be a real time saver :yes:

Got some in a closet that close growing in a bag now.:))
Worth

Sure, I've grown lots of potato varieties, but not since I moved to where I am now

Every year I'd plant a 252 ft row of them,I got them from two places,one in Oregon and the other in Maine.

No way can I remember what all the varieties were but I do remember Purple Viking,though and Yukon Gold, and lots of finger ones as well,one was banana, that I remember.

And I never planted whole potatoes, I'd cut sections that had one or two eyes,then if the soil was still cold,sprinkle Sulfa on the cut surfaces then dig a hole and plant them and hill them up as they grew taller.

Then came Fall, maybe even a first freeze and I'd be out there with a shovel, my back to that cold N wind digging them up and putting them in baskets.

More than once I felt that I was back in medieval times, digging potatoes with a passion since I remember that's all we had to eat back then.;)

Where I live now it's Big potato country,the Atwater family alone had hundreds of acres
and same for the Sheldons and in the Fall all the stands around here,especially Stannards, had lots of different varieties for sale.

The commercial folks have those machines that harvest that way and when they were through with a field they would open it up to anyone who wanted to go looking for the small ones left.

And no better eating than those small red ones,boil, cut them in half and drench them with butter fresh parsley on them.

Carolyn, who notes that the town she lives near, was settled originally by the Irish, and their family names are still here. Maybe I shouldn't say this but when my septic tank froze up in the bitter cold of January,it was Snell Septic who helped out and when he came in to explain everything I found out his name was Rhyne Snell, no better first name than Rhyne to indicate an Irish background.




Carolyn

[QUOTE]And no better eating than those small red ones,boil, cut them in half and drench them with butter fresh parsley on them.[/QUOTE]

Also great with fresh garlic, or scapes and rosemary with oil or butter.

I have to dig after they die back here or they start to sprout again before Fall (or rot in our clay soil)!

[QUOTE=GrowingCoastal;701295]Also great with fresh garlic, or scapes and rosemary with oil or butter.[/QUOTE]

I'm sure they tasted great with what you used.

But I'm 1/4 Swedish and the Swedes always used parsley, and I forgot to mention chives and sprinkle them on everything.

A typical plate of food was almost always white since almost everything was creamed. my mother cooked what her mother did and my grandmother was a Carlson from Uppsala, Sweden. Several branches of the Carlson's immigrated to the US.

Carolyn

In my experience planting them too close together yields smaller potatoes. I like big baking potatoes and only get them if I leave a decent amount of space between plants.

[QUOTE=carolyn137;701393]I'm sure they tasted great with what you used.

But I'm 1/4 Swedish and the Swedes always used parsley, and I forgot to mention chives and sprinkle them on everything.

A typical plate of food was almost always white since almost everything was creamed. my mother cooked what her mother did and my grandmother was a Carlson from Uppsala, Sweden. Several branches of the Carlson's immigrated to the US.

Carolyn[/QUOTE]
:yes:
My mother too cooked things only a few certain ways. Though I also use chives with tomatoes and on soups etc and must have parsley and black pepper on carrots I have expanded my horizons to include different things, the potatoes + garlic + rosemary idea coming from an Englishman. My garlic is scaping now and I look forward to having them on something soon! New potatoes, even from the store, will do.

I grow potatoes regularly and always in trenches about 8 inches apart that I hill up later. I also cut each spud into pieces with at least two eyes and never plant them in soil that has fresh manure, it promotes potato scab. I tried growing them in straw one year and it was a huge failure. I don't know if it was because the straw kept them too wet or because there were not enough nutrients in the straw.

You probably have about twice as many potatoes in that bed as you need. You'll probably get mostly small potatoes as a result. Potatoes typically respond to crowding by producing a larger quantity of small potatoes.

At about 2.25-2.5 ft2 per plant, about 13-14 potatoes would be ideal in that raised bed.

Thanks NathanP and brownrexx! That was basically what I was wondering about :o I'll see what turns out now that it's done and have a better idea for next year :?!?:

Size and quantity of potatoes are dependent on a number of factors, such as type, quality of soil and availability of nutrients. Spacing can vary from very close to three feet apart depending on whether the potato is early, mid or late season; or if it is a regular round type or fingerling. If you do a quick search you will find plenty of information on best growing practices for potatoes. Tom Wagner who is a member of TV would be the go to expert on this, hopefully he sees this thread.


Alex

I have small 60x80 cm raised bed boxes made from pallet collars. I have planted 8 uncut seed potatoes in such collar, so mine are planted even closer. We eat the spuds from my raised beds as fresh new potatoes, so I am not trying to get them to grow really large and usually harvest them before the tops die. This year I have potatoes in five 11" containers and two boxes, so I may let the other box grow longer to see how they grow so crowded. The same variety is also field grown, so I could compare how the tight spacing affects.

Sari

Here is an updated photo taken today. All have broken through the 3-4" layer of straw that I topped the bed off with. Essentially just a thick layer of mulch to keep down the weeds and sun off the plants. The potatoes themselves were covered with a compost and manure mixture I got at Lowes.


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I appreciate another look Sari. I hope you will update later in the year on your potato status :yes:

An update of the Potatoes today 6-5-18

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Starting to set flowers already :surprised:

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Beautiful!

Lovely!
I'm growing potatoes in buckets and the seed tubers were placed really close... as I was not sure which was going to survive. Now they are growing stalks & leaves, and I hope the space isn't too small to make new tubers...
Will try the first 'early 'variety in August, the latter one will be left to grow until September.

Update as of yesterday 7-7-18. I had to prune some along the way. They flopped over the sides of the bed and were in the way of the mower. Especially on the far side. I think I still clipped a few stalks as I mowed yesterday. :evil: Regardless they seem to continue on at this point :yes:

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Picked the first half of the potato bed today. This included all of the Purple Viking potatoes and some of the Yukon Gold that were planted. Not quite the harvest I had hoped for but better than nothing. We have had an exorbitant amount of rain this Summer. I found one rotting potato but the rest turned out Ok (not gonna mention the one I speared with my garden fork :shock: ) Still have roughly half the bed to go but will cure these first.


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Not sure why but I can't see the photos I posted :o I've noticed this in a few other topics lately as well. Can anyone else see them?

I see them. Nicely sized!

Dig half now to give the others space.
Nothing like new taters.

Wow, those are large potatoes. Did you count how many seed potatoes produced the ones you have now harvested?

My small pallet collar potato bed has still green foliage, so I have to wait before digging in there. I poked the soil with my fingers few weeks ago and dug up couple spuds from the surface to cook with the fresh new potatoes from one of the PotatoPot containers. We have had quite dry summer, so all raised beds and containers have needed watering almost every day. It will be interesting to see what grows in my small potato box.

Sari

I plant my seed potatoes under only a couple of inches of soil and then I pile straw on top. I am able to harvest my crop with just my hands, no fork needed.

I took a pic of the tubers after I pulled aside the straw because I was so impressed to see them laying there. I did not take a picture of the whole harvest but I probably tripled the amount that I planted and many of my potatoes were huge. These are Kennebec but the 2 red ones were a surprise so that must have come from a volunteer plant.

[url=https://flic.kr/p/27hdWHW][img]https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1814/42190422520_10fb5758aa.jpg[/img][/url][url=https://flic.kr/p/27hdWHW]20180812_122732[/url] by [url=https://www.flickr.com/photos/156361419@N03/]Brownrexx[/url], on Flickr

Last year I planted 9 Royal Blues in a 1/2 IBC roughly 1 x 1.2 m and missed watering the while bottling fruit and tomatoes in late Feb, checked for new spuds after they had died down but they were only small so I did not disturb them further. Have had about 50 come up so far over the past month. Have added about 15kg Alpaca poo to the top so far and thinking I will need to add the same again shortly, may even add 30kg - it comes at the right price.

It was definitely a good year to have them in a raised bed! They look good to me. I put some in very late in dollar store laundry baskets with landscape fabric to hold the compost. We had found some potatoes that were forgotten, so I threw them in something, basically. Haven't had to water since they broke through. Filled the baskets the rest of the way when high enough and they put flowers on a couple weeks back. It would be nice to get some, but I only have about an hour into them, so nothing lost otherwise.

Here are the rest of the potatoes from this bed. They are all Yukon Gold. I started with 28 seed potatoes in total. I didn't count the harvest but I think I am ahead a decent amount 8-)

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Hopefully the pictures are viewable by others since I can't view them anymore after posting for some reason. Just a black "x" viewable for me with "Name: IMG_2105.jpg (example) viewable". Maybe I need to rename the photo or something :evil:

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